


No Fortunate Son

by Rokeon



Series: Sam's Origin AU [2]
Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Rewrite, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-10
Updated: 2012-03-10
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rokeon/pseuds/Rokeon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam comes home</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**# bin/LLLSDLaserControl -ok 1**

**Aperture Clear?**

**/Yes/**

Sam hears something start up behind him, a whining activation of electronics, but before he can turn and look there's a flash of li--

He's in the office under the arcade.

It's different.

The noise behind him is different too. It's all around him, not behind him, a subliminal electronic hum that feels like a low-level current running through his bones. It's... not unpleasant, actually. Usually Sam's restless, the sort of person who can never quite sit still. More than one of his teachers suggested he get checked for ADHD. But this sensation... it's somehow comfortable. Reassuring. It feels like it should be familiar.

He still has no idea what's happened.

\-----

Outside, in the strange construct of neon and dark glass that's replaced the world, he admits what he already knows. He's on the Grid. All of the bedtime stories his father told him were true. He's been dreaming about this place since he was four years old and he's finally here.

It's exactly like he always pictured it.

His father had promised to bring him here when he was old enough, the same way he promised to explain about why Sam never had a mother. He figured the second one out on his own in middle school: the school library had a whole archive of old newspaper issues on microfilm. The meteoric rise of Encom's new CEO was well documented, including his relationship with the beautiful young architect who'd designed his new corporate headquarters. Sam remembers Aunt Jordan visiting when he was a kid, remembers going out to movies and racing the remote control lightcycles she brought all the way from Japan. He remembers how upset his dad was when he told him that Aunt Jordan wouldn't be coming to visit any more. Her name wasn't on his birth certificate, but Sam was old enough to put two and two together.

He's dragged back to what's currently passing for reality by a sudden spotlight and the roar of engines above him. He almost thinks it's a flashback to earlier in the night, deja vu (And wow, talk about the worst time ever to be making _Matrix_ jokes), but it's like that first moment after the flash and the jolt and the knowledge that _something_ had happened, even if he didn't know what. Part of him _knows_ that he's not going to look up and see another police chopper.

He's still not expecting a goddamn Recognizer, but he thinks he should have been. Kevin Flynn never did do anything by halves.

\-----

Then the fembots in white sync the disc to his back and everything becomes a little sharper, a little clearer. That half-heard whisper in the back of his head ( _Sirens,_ it's telling him, _they're called Sirens_ ) gets louder, and he knows what the last Siren is going to tell him even before he asks her for his directive.

"Survive."

He's had people telling him what to do his whole life: go to Caltech, take the reins at Encom, be the son and heir of Kevin Flynn. Like he's told Alan a thousand times, none of it's been right. He never told him about the niggling feeling that there was something out there, something waiting for him to come and finish it. This is the first command that's ever felt like a step in the right direction.

He takes another step, out into the light of the arena, and he can hear the crowd chanting. Disc Wars. Caltech may not have been the place for him - for all their talk about wasted potential, he doesn't think a single one of his professors didn't heave a sigh of relief when he finally left - but his intramural Ultimate team practically rioted when he told them he was dropping out just before the playoffs. Sam's been throwing a disc since practically before he could walk.

It's one more thing he's going to have to bring up with his dad, when he finds him. But first he's got a game to win.


	2. Chapter 2

The first two fights, after that initial moment of _how is this real?,_ are too easy. Twenty years since he last played his father's house-rules hybrid of Frisbee tag and dodgeball and the rules come straight back to him: get hit on a limb, that limb is out. Get hit in the head or the body, you're dead. He can see the disc coming toward him and calculate all the angles, knows that this throw will miss on the first pass but that the ricochet from floor to rear wall to ceiling and down will hit him in the back of the head unless he dodges _now._

He shouldn't be able to do this. But at the same time... he should be _better_ than this. It shouldn't be taking him this long to put things together. He's wasting time.

Over the edge and down and he thinks he's out, for just a heartbeat, before the commentator announces that he's just skipped straight to the final boss battle. Rinzler, whoever he is, isn't going to be as easy as the others.

Then he sees him, glossy black over matte and double identity discs, and Sam's thrown so far off that he wastes a long moment trying to split his own disc in two.

He derezzed his first two opponents, yes, but only because he had no other option. There wasn't any error inherent in them, they were just programs forced into a bad situation. This guy, this Rinzler, there's something seriously _wrong_ with him. Which wouldn't be fucking with Sam's head half as much as it is except for the part where that little voice in his head, the same one that's screaming at him to put Rinzler down like a rabid dog, is also telling him that this is supposed to be his best friend in all the world. Either world. Both.

The noise he's making, that rattling purr of broken hardware... it's getting under his skin the same way the hum of the Grid does. It feels like Marv jumping up onto his lap, soft and warm and begging for pets, at the same time that someone is scraping sharpened fingernails over a million freshly-exposed nerves. He _needs_ to beat Rinzler. He _needs_ to have his back. It's distracting as hell.

Having gravity do a 180 on him is also distracting. Even more so the second time.

Then Rinzler has him pinned, disc at his throat. Sam glances over at the stinging line on his arm long enough to verify that blood is indeed welling up through the cut in suit, then locks his eyes back onto the faceted black helmet hovering in front of his face. Whatever happens next, he wants to see it coming.

He misses the chance to watch the blood as it runs down his arm, falls away, and dissolves into pixels before it ever makes contact with the ground. Rinzler doesn't, and that fingernails-meet-chalkboard noise coming from somewhere inside him skips a beat. The almost familiar voice that rasps out next rises just a fraction on the second syllable, an inflection that would be inaudible if Sam wasn't straining every sense to the limit.

_"User?"_


	3. Chapter 3

Rinzler drags him to his feet, obviously presenting him to someone, and the roar of the crowd fades as a new voice booms down from above: "Identify yourself, program."

"My name is Sam Flynn."

He wants to say something else, to challenge the assumption that he's nothing more than another piece of software whose only purpose is to be shoved around at the whims of whoever is running this little freakshow, but he can't escape the sense that he's running out of time. This isn't the Grid of his childhood bedtime stories- programs weren't abducted off the streets in that place, the games didn't end with executions, and errors like Rinzler weren't permitted run unchecked. He needs to find his father, needs to figure out where everything went wrong, needs to fix things. He needs to see who the wizard is that's hiding behind that flying curtain up there.

His name clearly means something to the crowd, if the sudden resurgence of noise is any indication, but now Rinzler is shoving him forward as part of the arena's solid wall derezzes into an archway. Two programs march out, their red circuits and polearms a perfect copy of the guards on the Recognizer, and grab hold of his arms. They haul him back the way they came, clearly intending to escort him somewhere, and Rinzler falls in a step behind. Off to see the wizard it is, then.

\-----

The inside of the ship is a labyrinth of identical corridors, all dark walls and amber lighting, and he's lost any sense of orientation by the time the final set of doors slides open and the guards march him into a large room. It's a surprise when they let go of his arms, moving off and taking sentry positions to either side, but all of Sam's attention is caught by the dark silhouette gazing out the window straight ahead. Helmeted, with gold circuits outlining some sort of long black cloak, this can't be anyone but the person in charge.

He gets straight to the point: "Who are you?" The figure turns around, his helmet folding back away and into itself to reveal a face beneath that is so achingly familiar. Sam feels himself freeze, his body locking up and his heart skipping a beat.

Whatever the hell that thing is, it is _not_ Kevin Flynn.

Facing off against Rinzler was disorienting, wrong-but-right, and left him wanting a shower to get clean and chase away the chills running down his spine. This has moved beyond _hot shower_ and gone straight to _nuke the entire site from orbit._

It's smiling at him with his father's face and walking toward him as if he's honestly supposed to believe that this is Flynn. As if just being in the same room with it isn't tripping every bad feeling, survival instinct, and internal alarm he has, plus a few more that sprang into being just for the occasion. "Sam. Look at you, man. Look at the size of you." It's spreading its arms like it's going to hug him and oh, hell no.

For the next few seconds, he doesn't actually think, just moves. His left arm sweeps up and knocks away the reaching hands as he ducks and turns and stretches his other arm out behind him blindly, not even sure what he's reaching for before he feels his palm slap down on something solid. Rinzler pulls back instantly, dropping into a fighting stance and drawing his discs, but the heavy rod that had been fixed to his thigh comes away in Sam's hand. He isn't planning on hanging around for a rematch.

The window shatters just like regular glass, and freefall has never been such a welcome relief before. The baton breaks cleanly between his hands and he cranes his neck to watch the circuit lines as they diagram themselves across empty space and rezz the lightjet into existence around him. Awesome.

...how did he know it could do that?


	4. Chapter 4

The light jet wobbles drunkenly at first, dangerously so, but the controls are surprisingly intuitive and Sam has always been a quick study. Once he's got things leveled out it's the work of a microcycle to access the jet's power management controls and disable the combat functions. It's a risk, restricting the system to transport-only, but losing the guns is worth cutting off the bright _follow me!_ ribbon of light that had been spooling out behind him. Leaving a trail of neon breadcrumbs behind him kind of defeats the purpose of trying to escape.

The city is full of buildings, towers of black glass traced out in neon against the dark of the sky, but there are a few that stand out. One in particular, the tallest, has a shining platform of some kind extending out from the top like a welcome mat waiting for him to land, but he writes it off as too much of a risk; too few escape routes if it turns out to be a dead end, a trap, or Evil Flynn's penthouse of doom.

Evil Flynn. His skin is still crawling, but that screaming sense of _WRONG_ has faded enough with the distance for him to realize that it has to have been Clu, Flynn's Codified License Utility 2.0. Sam was never really crazy for more stories about Clu, not the way he was for anything that had to do with Tron, but he remembers enough. Clu was supposed to be a complement to Flynn, the perfect program designed to match his strengths and support his weaknesses, the same way that-

There's a vehicle of some kind on the ground below him. He's past the edges of the city now, over the irregular and incomplete terrain of the outlands, and whatever can run over that must be a specialized sort of light ATV. It looks sleek, fast, and a hell of a lot more inconspicuous than a jet. 

He's never tried carjacking before. It's one more thing on today's list of things that should be more difficult than they actually are, but in this case it's less about another newly discovered talent and more about the fact that he's basically strafing a go-kart with a fighter plane. A few warning shots across its path, a couple more to either side when the driver tries to turn and run; the hardest part is not crashing into his own reactivated light ribbon when he wheels back around for another pass.

The ATV eventually stops and its cover retracts. There's only the driver inside, an anonymous figure looking up through an opaque black helmet that reminds him all too unpleasantly of Rinzler. The reflexive shiver that runs through his whole body has him diving the jet steeper and faster than he probably should. He pulls up and derezzes it at the last second, neatly sticking a three-point landing with his energized disc in his free hand.

Then the driver somersaults out to face him, simultaneously pulling a disc and a goddamn _lightsaber,_ and Sam really hates his life right now.


End file.
